


gold

by isanas



Series: Controlling the Cosmos [1]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: (probably part 1 of many), ....angst, Controlling the Cosmos, Gen, I'm sorry Chai I love you, other warnings: domestic violence, this is Chai's story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 01:20:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13156146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isanas/pseuds/isanas
Summary: “We are made of permanence and brevity; we are made of scars.”





	gold

Chai wears gold bangles around his wrists because they keep him grounded. They encircle him in cold, infinite loops and give him an excuse to wring his hands, spinning the bands round and round until the metal is warm and malleable in his palms. Heavy and unwieldy, they encompass his forearms in semblance of an embrace.

 

* * *

 

“How unsightly,” his father would say, ornamental staff in hand. It’s a gilded family treasure that will someday belong to the heir of the dukedom. Chai hates it because it’s gold, and gold hurts, even when he braces himself with an armful of matching ore. The blows rain down mercilessly on his frail figure, and his opinions hold little weight in comparison.

Once upon a time, Saya would bravely leap to his rescue, bearing the brunt of every strike. Undaunted, she rips jewel hairpins from her head and scatters them across the floor like crystal raindrops.

“It’s not his fault,” she says. “It’s mine."

(a lie.)

A small Chai peers out from beneath unruly black hair, trembling from head to toe. The gap between his weakness and Saya’s unconquerable strength lingers despite the years he pours into magic and the arts. He loathes his incompetence, his ineptitude for change.

Eventually, when she is sent away to reform, Chai is left without a protector. 'Abandoned' is not the right word, but nonetheless, he resents her for leaving him behind.

Of course, he doesn’t tell Saya. She doesn’t need to know. 

 

* * *

 

Chai writes his name in elegant brush strokes, unwavering ebony scripts arranged with a deceitful perfection he only ever sees in others. Still, he writes dutifully, removing his gold bangles to take up a pen. Buried in texts, his only solace is by the west window of a library overflowing with dusty scrolls and softly filtered sunlight. Chai inhales knowledge like air, whispering enchantments that come naturally, a boy who could take the world apart and rebuild it if he so much as had a drop of courage.

Fear claws its way out of his cracked ribcage in the form of smileless greetings, impeccable manners, and a fondness for circular gold. It inhabits the metal halos around his wrists and cuffs him to the earth. In his hands, he cradles the broken heart his sister left behind like a corroding key, wondering if it was his own to begin with.

 

* * *

 

“Stand up straight,” they tell him. “You have a reputation to uphold.”

Asking the lonely spaces who he should be and who he wants to be, the secondborn son searches for himself. With his face clutched in his hands, gleaming wristlets swiveling down to his elbows, Chai wanders.

He’s the best in his primary academy class, a child genius hailing from the north. He has his mother’s eyes, his father’s cold demeanor, and a distrust for people who smile too easily.

There are better places, greater places, his grandmother used to say, pointing at the horizon with a crooked finger. She alluded to a secret known only by the glistening ocean, but Grandmother Hokkaia is long gone and Chai will never find out the answer. He can only pretend that the sunset to the west is a harbinger of change, a radiant prayer fading into the night.

Time passes without sympathy, and Chai almost convinces himself he doesn’t need saving. Just when he grows accustomed to loneliness, Saya marches back to the estate in full combat gear and men’s attire. She wields an imperial summons in her hand and her eyes are alit with a fire he cannot yet comprehend, a shapeless rage at being forced back to the estate by royal decree.

Chai’s hands shake with excitement because he wants to take her by the shoulders and find out who she has become so that perhaps he, too, can discover what dwells inside himself. Had he been a stranger without a drop of noble blood, perhaps he would have asked.

In the end, he doesn’t ask Saya. She probably wouldn’t know. 

 

* * *

 

“Have you changed your ways?” they ask her. The scales of judgment are unbalanced, forever tilted against her favor.

“No,” Saya responds resolutely, crumpling an ornate scroll in her fist. Her eyes flit in her brother’s direction, catching a glimpse of his grimace. Though her expression remains unchanged, it’s clear what she’s thinking.

Chai’s stomach churns and he slinks away to his favorite window, looking wistfully over the empty courtyard.

 _I am nobody,_ he thinks, as the overcast douses the world in monotone palettes. Clad in red silk and without any proper jade to his name, he is and always has been nobody. The second child, heir to nothing, and proprietor of none — nobody. Over a hundred long, agonizing years he has been alive, and yet he is still a coward. Chai Cheng Li, who would only inherit a title because his elder sister rejected it on a clear spring day.

“You will change,” they say, to both children. In hindsight, Chai scorns their vexing conviction in the improbability of change, but they aren’t completely wrong.

Wind chimes jingle serenely in the distance, the clouds dancing as they withdraw and reveal pristine blue skies. Saya litters the floor with the remains of a shredded handscroll and passes through like thunder without rain, a storm Chai watches with one hand on the windowpane and the other turning gold in periodic spirals. In the glass reflection, he notes the disappointment in their parents’ faces and the downward swing of a walking staff.

 

* * *

 

Eventually, Chai is sent away to school with mighty expectations riding on his shoulders. Unlike his sister, he leaves home for knowledge rather than discipline. He is eager to escape the solitude of the estate, gladly stepping foot inside Hisui’s looming walls to temporarily forget his spiteful bloodline. The capital welcomes those who wear egregious layers of jewelry around their necks, and the son of the northern hills is no exception to the rule.

Chai continues wearing gold not because he should, but because he’s afraid he’ll drift aloft without it. It’s not uncommon amongst his peers, most of them minor heirs like himself, but when he enrolls in university he tentatively trades his armlets for rings because the sound of gold on gold echoes in his mind without reprieve.

He’s a month into his first semester when he receives a letter from his sister. It’s addressed to his school dormitory in a familiar, turbulent scrawl, the same writing he’s seen in the backs of picture books and practice scrolls. He smooths out the letter and reads an invitation to a street he doesn’t recognize.

 _Don’t wear gold,_ it says just above the closing line.

In slight confusion, Chai dons a gray tunic with long sleeves and fastens a simple cotton belt around his waist, praying he won’t float away without his weights. His wishes are offered in vain, however, as he haphazardly snatches his largest gold ring at the last minute and swivels the clan signet so that it digs into his palm when he forms a fist.

Hiding his hands in his sleeves, Chai meanders to the southernmost corner of Hisui’s limits, a district that hates his kind. They despise the way he walks, the way he talks, even the way he breathes, but he follows the map anyway.

The letter guides him to a sizeable but humble townhome. Tousling his hair to hide the facial features that condemn him, Chai knocks on the door with his ringless left hand.

A tall elf answers the door, pushing it ajar with an unreadable expression like clouded jade. He has silver hair and a steady gaze, detached yet sharp all at once. Chai remembers the face from somewhere long ago.

“I recognize you,” he says to the stranger. (a truth.)

“And I you,” replies the man, swinging the door open wider.

He introduces himself as Eizan Shen, a military academy graduate in Saya’s class. Vaguely, Chai recalls an excursion to the capital for a royal counsel his father forced him to attend. There, he’d seen the ghost of his sister in a cadet uniform, but she never looked in his direction. Chai had been disappointed, but understood why Saya might’ve avoided her family then. Instead, a willowy elf had spoken to him, a scrawny boy maybe half the width of the man before him.

Eizan gestures broadly and welcomes him inside, where two others sit around an oak table. One is an older woman with needle-pricked fingers, appraising a spool of high-quality silk, and the other is a human man with the carriage of a royal but the smile of a commoner.

“My parents,” Eizan says, nodding at them.

“You’re half,” Chai states bluntly, forgetting his place. He blanches inwardly and anxiously turns his ring around his middle finger. A part of his upbringing tells him it is _they_ who should remember their place, not him, but he swallows it with his pride. He starts to feel nauseous, as he does when too many people talk to him or touch him without warning, though the room is quite vacant.

“And you’re whole,” Eizan says evenly, with neither hesitation nor malice. He has a peculiar way of giving the boy room to breathe and his voice is smooth and low, like the calm ripple of water. Unexpectedly, Chai is comforted by his presence.

The elven woman ushers him into a chair and introduces herself as a seamstress for the nobility. Chai immediately recognizes her name, as the master dressmaker Meihua is known even to the Cheng Li clan.

“Are you surprised?” she asks, smiling amicably.

“No,” Chai says. (a lie.)

“The tunic you’re wearing is from my shop, you know.”

“I suppose it was too much to ask for you not to wear silk,” the human cuts in with a stern glare. At the same time, he slides a bowl of sliced apples across the table, his expression of disdain incongruent with his actions.

Chai shakes his head, baffled. He doesn’t own anything that isn’t silk aside from the sash around his waist, but even that’s a borrowed item.

“It’s too cold at night to go without clothes,” he says flatly, looking at Eizan for assistance. The half-elf offers nothing, only raises an eyebrow in amusement before disappearing into the kitchen.

“Is that so?” asks the father, teal eyes twinkling with mirth. He seems to approve of Chai’s inadvertent cheekiness, which puts the boy at ease.

The candles on the wall flicker gently and conversation carries on easily. Meihua speaks with a kind, melodic voice like her son’s, and the human man promptly sheds his aloofness. He introduces himself as Daizan, a renowned artisan woodworker from one of the southeastern trade towns. Chai is tempted to drop a snide remark about the incredible naming sense they had for their son, but holds his tongue.

He settles into an unfamiliar but comfortable rhythm, consumed by the kindness of strangers in a dimly lit room. It’s a pleasant yet terrifying, for he was raised in spacious chambers and wintry, sunlit halls.

Eizan reemerges from the kitchen and sets an old clay teapot on the table alongside a tray carrying five ceramic mugs. They don’t quite match, but they are lovingly worn, the swirls of acrylic faded from years of use.

Chai graciously takes a cup, noting that the tea is more fragrant than what he’s had at home. It reminds him of Grandmother Hokkaia and summer skies dotted with stars, cool nights spent hugging a warm canteen of tea to his chest as she pointed out constellations.

“It’s delicious,” he says honestly, savoring another sip. When Daizan lifts his hand to accept a drink, Chai flinches, but nobody seems to notice. (they noticed.)

“I recognize your work,” Chai continues, trying to segue from his brief recoil. The room boasts an abundance of beautiful cabinetry that almost seems too grand for such a modest abode. “The university headmaster’s desk is one of yours, I believe. The detail is superb.”

“Flattery will get you anywhere, boy,” says Daizan, bristling slightly. _“As will blood.”_

“Dear,” Meihua chides. _“_ Don’t scare him.”

“Don’t mind my father’s manners,” Eizan says, clasping his own mug and taking a seat. “He simply holds a grudge for your family’s lack of patronage.”

“I said the same thing to your sister.” The older man folds his arms. “Do you know what she told me?”

Chai glances around the table and notices Daizan and his son share a stunning resemblance, only one has silver hair tinted by age and the other’s retains a dark slate color. They have the same perceptive and patient eyes, waiting expectantly as if they know he has the answer, and they both smile with the same subtle tenderness.

It comes to Chai, sharply, like a comet streaking from the dark skies he so fondly remembers.

 _Yes, I know,_ he thinks. A breathy laugh escapes his lips as he recalls hide-and-seek in a vast family library, reciting from books in unison and making up whimsical endings. At some point, huddled in the patchy sunlight of the west window, he’d forgotten how to tell if the words were his own or someone else’s.

But Saya always had a favorite, and Chai has never forgotten.

“Good fences make good neighbors,” he says, “but a good fist breaks mighty walls.”

The room fills with jovial laughter and for the first time in a long time, Chai genuinely smiles. Somehow, laughing is easier than breathing.

He startles when a hand lands heavily on his shoulder but hears a boyish snicker by his ear and a voice he would recognize anywhere, and his heart skips a beat. Something between a jumbled name and a yelp slips out as he turns around.

“You remembered,” Saya exclaims, delighted. She hooks an arm around his neck and plants a kiss into his wavy hair, her other hand balancing a basket of bread on her hip.

“Of course I did,” mumbles Chai as he is smothered in a bear hug. Luckily, Saya puts down the market goods before throwing her arms around her baby brother with glee.

 _How could I forget?_ Chai thinks as he silently recounts the times Saya would chant it over and over, elated at how the words fit between the wounds on her knuckles. Compared to her brother’s slender fingers, Saya’s hands are shaped by the faces she’s struck and the metersticks she’s fended off. She always looked strange with her hands folded in her lap, a canvas of purpled bruises over rich, flawless silks.

Chai marvels at her palms now, calloused and scarred and strong, and then glances down at his ring hand.

“She threatened to punch my father,” Eizan says, pouring Saya a cup of tea. He meets Chai’s eyes, wearing the smallest of smirks. “Can you imagine?”

“I can,” Chai replies.

“Oh, shush,” says Saya. She motions for her brother to stand and he happily complies, although he’s slightly miffed to find she’s still a little taller than him.

They stand similarly, trained in the way of belts upon shoulder blades, but Saya possesses an extra edge, the rigid posture of a soldier that Chai cannot replicate. A dash of sand-beige powder conceals the royal birthmark beneath her right eye, aligned beauty marks they’d both inherited from the Cheng Li lineage. Her round baby face has slimmed, her arms are tanned and muscular, and her hair cascades well past her shoulders.

“You’re catching up to me,” Saya murmurs, drawing a line from his head to hers. She snickers at his characteristic nest of dark hair. “But maybe it’s the volume of this _mess_.”

Chai gently nudges her hands aside, pouting slightly. Her laughter resonates in the room and for a moment, he forgets the gravity of gold and lets himself bask in nostalgia. Perhaps, if he can find peace in the sound of her voice, he can find peace elsewhere, too. It’s a rare tranquility buried in Saya’s laughter, their grandmother’s fairytales, and the benign spot of sunlight below the west window of the library.

And then Chai sees Eizan’s hand on the small of his sister’s back and realizes that harmony is but an eroding façade. A bitter pang of envy for Saya’s world plagues him, idling on a home built out of stars that fall ceaselessly from a black velvet sky.

Exhaling, Chai lets the emotion pass and touches the dragon emblem on his middle finger. He can’t bring himself to feel jealousy or generosity or anything in between, only the vague perception of loss. Chai knows Saya won’t come back. She never will.

Instead, the words they’d scribbled into book bindings and hidden in mahogany shelves will be remembered and forgotten, again and again in endless loops like the rings on his right hand.

But of course, Chai doesn’t tell Saya he’s afraid. She doesn’t need to know. 

 

* * *

 

Homecooked food is unlike anything he’s ever tasted. It’s a brimming dinner of rich curry and sautéed watercress, plain rice and pork sung. The knockoff version of honeyed lotus root coaxes a delighted laugh out of him. He takes nearly the whole plate for himself, and the family lets him.

At some point, Chai subconsciously turns his ring right-side-up, the dragon of the Cheng Li crest glittering with tiny emerald eyes. Tonight, it is a compassionate guardian, watching over the household’s humble hearth. Few would extend the courtesy of hospitality to Chai, and he is smart enough to show his thanks with his biggest smile, as the Shens seem like people who prefer happiness over decorum.

After the meal, Saya sees him to the door and apologizes for never writing home.

“I missed you a lot,” she says. The royal summons that forced her back is never mentioned, and Chai doesn’t bring it up.

“I missed you, too,” he replies.

Eizan walks him to the edge of town, where the community intersects with the city and magic lanterns illuminate cobblestone paths.

“Come visit any time,” he says. The half-elf points at Chai’s hand and the diamonds obscured by an embroidered gray cuff. “I’ll let that slide this time.”

“Are you saying so out of concern, or out of resentment?”

“I have none of the latter, so you may assume it’s concern.” Eizan reaches over and gently ruffles Chai’s hair. “Take care of yourself.”

 

* * *

 

Most of Chai’s treks to his sister’s home correspond remarkably with the timing of letters from the north, but he pretends it’s a friendly coincidence. Eventually, he memorizes the route from the university to the gnarled, winding paths of Hisui’s southern quadrants 

The escape provides him little to do besides follow Eizan to the stables or learn how to cook, and Meihua visits often to teach him. Chai nicks his fingers a dozen times and nearly takes off his arm, but by the first day of the Moon Path festival, he’s mastered the Shen family’s signature curry. 

Often, he huddles in the local bookshop, marveling at worn treasures no elf of noble blood would ever lay their hands on. The shopkeeper is an elderly man who dusts off old classics and lugs an entire crate of magic scrolls from the back room for him. He’s a retired druid from the Spell Ministry who tired of magic laws and instead pursued his love for books. Chai listens to the elder’s stories in starry-eyed wonder, knees hugged to his chest in awe.

“Shouldn’t you focus on your studies?” asks Saya one day, kneeling next to him. They are sitting in a hidden alcove behind a wall of secondhand volumes, not unlike their old hiding spot in the family library. Many a morning would find the two of them asleep in the stacks, fingers stained with ink after scribbling make-believe stories into the backs of ancient tomes.

Chai, with a novel in hand and a magic-imbued candle hovering at his side, replies, “Isn’t this enough?”

 

* * *

 

Honor is a curse upon which Chai must engrave his name and sign away his life, a prison of fool’s gold with a key made of jade. The price of freedom is nothing short of his identity and the elaborate rings of his right hand that keep him earthbound.

Of course, when one is born 17th in line to the throne, there are 16 reasons not to care about honor — that is, until one of those reasons disappears. Saya casts it all aside and forsakes him as he reaches through frigid bars spaced just wide enough to slip his arms through. She takes his precious rings and leaves him behind with nothing but the words: _don’t wear gold._

The weight of inheritance terrifies him, but a seed of hope stirs Chai from his paralysis and summons a courage his old self might have abandoned. It takes root in the keyhole of his heart, a vine that sprouts through his porcelain ribcage. Someday, he’ll emerge from the shell his parents so painstakingly shaped him into, and the rusted bolt in his core will disappear into the thicket.

Perhaps it’s his sister, whose mistakes are the aggregate of ambitions and determination; perhaps it’s nothing but Chai’s own reflection in the window, tired of seeing discolored bruises on his skin; or perhaps, it’s the single, carelessly misspoken line that shatters his cowardice borne of gold. Whatever it is, it is _enough,_ and he holds onto it for dear life.

 

* * *

 

Human hands wrap around his throat and Chai feels danger trickle into the marrow of his bones. He sees it clearly, then, in the eyes of a mild man hiding a ferocious spirit.

Taizi Ying is Eizan’s childhood friend and the greatest swordsman to ever have lived in the Kingdom of Liang. Not a single drop of elven blood runs in his veins and yet his name is known throughout the nation with both high praise and inevitable controversy. He is wholly accepted by the wizened professionals of his field, but disputed amongst the rest. Taizi is what the elite call “a shame,” and he suffers from the misfortune of being purely human.

“Say it again. I dare you.”

“You’re just a human,” Chai snarls through gritted teeth. In one arm, he clutches an old text, something ironic about the art of war and peace. His other hand scrabbles in a pitiful attempt to free himself. “What would _you_ know?”

“What would I know?” Taizi echoes, a dangerous smile playing at his lips. He loosens his grip on the boy slightly, but doesn’t let go. “ _What,_ indeed?”

Chai has studied a thousand ancient texts but somehow, he’s forgotten how wars start and dynasties end, how time and history and knowledge should not be three separate entities. All he knows is the Now laid before his eyes and the lesson Taizi paints over his honorable Cheng Li name.

“You have never seen a hardship your entire life,” says the swordsman. “You have never been poor. You have never starved, never begged for coins on the street, never entertained passersby for your next meal.”

Chai silently counts every heartbeat that thuds heavily in his chest, searching for words that don’t come.

“You have never been denied anything, you have never—” Taizi takes Chai by the collar with both hands, choking him into silence with knuckles white against red silk, _“—been beaten_ _for the blood in your veins.”_

The room is cold, devoid of sunlight as dusk stretches across the sky. Neither Saya nor Eizan help him. Wryly, Chai recalls resenting his sister for not protecting him. This time around, 'abandoned' seems like the right word, but he no longer cares.

A perilous sensation of fearlessness courses through him as he relinquishes the book, pages fluttering closed on hardwood panels. The sound has an empty fullness Chai doesn’t quite comprehend. Placing a hand on Taizi’s wrist, he smiles crookedly and draws strength from his breathlessness. The four rings of his right hand, all inland with pure droplets of jade and the largest bearing his clan signet, line up neatly along fair human skin.

“Don’t touch me,” he hisses, finding the words.

_Good fences make good neighbors, but a good fist breaks mighty walls._

Knuckles wrapped in metal meet Taizi’s left cheekbone with a sickening crack. Chai throws the punch with textbook precision, just the way he’s seen Saya do a thousand times in the schoolyard. Uninhibited ferocity should have been bred out of a boy like Chai Cheng Li, but he relishes the resounding sting that rattles up his entire arm.

It’s a sight to behold — a human, maybe 90 years his junior and twice his weight, staggering backward into a wall. Taizi seethes, his face nearly the same shade as his hair.

“Never been beaten for my blood?” Chai says, tugging his collar straight. “I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell know what that means.”

“You’re gutsy,” Taizi says, rebounding with frightening athleticism. “I like you.”

He closes the gap in one step and swings. Chai, a scholar by nature, resorts to what he knows best and snatches the candelabra on the table, letting fly an incantation. A wicked flame engulfs Taizi’s arm and scorches his linen cuffs to ashes, erupting in a flare of heat and light that never touch actual flesh, a testament to Chai’s precision.

The two lurch apart, Chai stumbling into the dining table and Taizi hastily ripping the remainder of his singed sleeves from his arms. He stomps on the fabric twice, quelling the fire. Without a word, he appraises his miraculously unburnt arms and looks back at Chai.

“I like you,” Taizi repeats as he extends his hand. “I like you, Chai Cheng Li, because you punched with your ring hand.”

“I like gold,” Chai says, “because it hurts more.”

When Taizi laughs, Chai imagines being circled by a tiger. The black stripes on its coat mirror the scars that run between Chai’s shoulder blades and the length of his torso, and it beckons a tentative comradery between the elf and the tiger in human’s skin. Trust is still far off, but their handshake is an acknowledgment in the low light of melted candles and satiated fires.

“You’re a lot like your sister, you know.” Taizi straightens, rubbing his cheek.

Chai scoffs and folds his arms.

“Hardly.”

“Well, you’re cheeky and you throw a mean right hook, just like she does.” Taizi turns to Saya. “But y’know, he also reminds me of me.”

Saya all but curtsies, beaming at both her friend and her brother. Unsure whether to take that as an insult or a compliment, Chai broods. He wants to talk to Taizi but isn’t sure how, so instead he offers a repair spell for the damaged jacket.

At midnight, Chai returns to his dorms, bidding them goodnight with a nonchalant farewell and a very stiff bow. When he reaches the first flight of cobblestone stairs, Taizi is mysteriously there. He sits on the first few stone steps, his hair a brilliant amber beneath the streetlights. When he stands, he rests his palm on the hilt of a crafted sword.

“How did you get here before me?” asks Chai.

“It’s called magic. You should look it up.” Taizi grins.

“I’ll try it out,” deadpans Chai. “Why are you here?”

“I have a request for you, Chai Cheng Li.”

Chai scowls at the repeated use of his full name. He twists his ring a few times.

“Hey now, don’t make that face. It’s only because I think you’re a good kid. Just listen, will ya?”

“I’m over a century old, and you are approximately 1/5 my age. Technically, you’re the ‘kid’ here.” Chai begins to shoulder past, but Taizi draws his sword and traces a line from the young elf’s chin to his chest, the sharp edge juxtaposed with his heart.

“Someday,” Taizi says, “when you are covered in more gold than your existence is worth, come back here.”

Memories and words echo amidst fireflies and shadows, forming the silhouette of scars shared between an elf and a human.

“You’ll come back and tell me what it is you see in our humble bookshops and our poor towns.” The blade diverts, the tip of the sword pushing into the polished leather of the satchel strapped across Chai’s body. “Tell me what it is that makes gold hurt more. Tell me what it is that _you know._ ”

It’s not a threat, but a promise. Someday, Chai will swear it to jade, a vow that will surpass even death. It’s the shape of a voice, worn and weak like old book spines and reminiscent of the tears he’d shed as his father struck him with a gold rod. If Chai looks closely enough, he’ll see the world through an amethyst kaleidoscope the same color as his eyes. He’ll witness blood stains on simple wool rags as his rings clatter upon marble tiles, forlorn and soundless.

It’s a promise in the form of faith, a longing for change only someone with royal blood can bring about.

“I am only 8th in line,” Chai says, staring into the shadows.

 _“Only,”_ echoes Taizi. “How unfortunate. You should focus more on yourself, first.”

He sheathes his sword, gleaming metal disappearing into the night. Sidestepping so that the elf boy may pass, he adds, “If you come back every week, I’ll teach you how to throw a punch without rings. You’re pathetically weak.”

“Didn’t you say I throw a mean right hook?” Chai says.

“Humans lie, Chai Cheng Li. Didn’t you know?” Taizi’s smile flashes a set of sharp canines.

“I wasn’t aware,” Chai responds dryly.

“Well now you know. Don’t trust so easily, little elf boy. Suspicion is your best defense, and initiative is your best weapon.”

“Are you sure?” Chai snaps his fingers and a nearby lantern flares briefly, forming a fire serpent that swipes dangerously close to red hair. “There’s this thing called magic. You should look it up.”

Taizi scoffs, neglecting to even dodge the burst that deliberately misses him. Chai winds his way up the stone steps and slows at the top to glance back, but the swordsman is already gone, leaving only the hues of twilight in his wake.

Adding up the hardships and subtracting the days before he was alone, Chai begins to wonder. In a world where one can grow trees without seeds and burn pages without flame, who’s to say a simple boy with gold rings and a locked heart cannot take the world apart and reassemble it as he fancies?

Standing atop the empty staircase, he realizes the answer is only himself.

Chai devotes himself to one future, but he doesn’t tell anyone. Nobody needs to know. 

 

* * *

 

Soon after, Chai doubles his course load with both combative and medicinal magic. As usual, he ignores the increasingly agitated letters from the north that berate his lack of response and attempt to control his curriculum. When the mail carrier slips the envelopes under his door, he reduces them to a char with a brisk snap. Lately, he’s taken to decomposing the letterheads and reconstituting its elements into his mahogany desk.

As promised, Taizi trains the lanky little elf boy into respectable form. Every other night, Chai props his window open and slips out of the dormitories, a self-writing script twirling ink into essays while he’s gone.

He practices trading blows with his fists and staffs and knives. He learns to pick himself up after each tumble, to dodge and retreat, to advance and strike. Seasons pass, and he finds he’s dreadful with a bow and arrow, so he fiddles with a handful of target charms. When his aim is a little too miraculous, Taizi scolds him thoroughly but is nonetheless impressed by his progress.

Sometimes, Saya is there, sleepy after a long day of work but always supportive of the enchanted palm strikes her little brother has perfected. She doesn’t mention the set of rings he puts down in the grass while training.

“You don’t need me anymore,” she says one night, a hand on his cheek. “Look at you.”

Chai has entered his third year of college and he’s grown a bit taller than her. His shoulders are broader and stronger, his posture confident. His archery skills still leave much to be desired, but he’s handsomely filled his scrawny frame.

“I don’t even recognize you,” his sister murmurs.

“That’s not true,” Chai says, saddened. He hasn’t looked in the mirror lately except to pacify the mess that is his hair, and now he almost doesn’t want to.

“You could learn alchemy,” Saya continues, “like you always wanted to.”

“Yeah, I could.” Chai is hesitant to admit that he already has. Combat skills are required to enter the nation’s School of Alchemy, which is why Chai never enrolled, but unbeknownst to his family, he’s already memorized all the books and chemical formulas. “But Father would never approve.”

“Don’t tell him,” his sister suggests with a grin. “Like me. I never tell him anything.”

Chai rolls his eyes. For as long as he can remember, algorithms and formulas came as easily as counting to ten. He’d devoted at least forty years to decoding the makeup of the world, and now alchemy is hardly a second thought. He is leagues beyond his peers, beyond even the top alchemists in the nation, but this secret is best left untold.

His first transmutation occurred during grade school — he’d shaped a tiny wooden bird from a chunk of bark. Saya thought he’d carved it in a crafts class and claimed the little oak sparrow for herself. (“A memento,” she said, using big words to impress him.) Grandmother Hokkaia seemed to know, but she never discouraged him, only smiled and told him it was splendid.

“You’d be stronger than me,” Saya says now, pulling away. Her quiet voice is filled with pride but her eyes are overcome with sorrow. “My baby brother.”

 _You don’t need me anymore,_ she doesn’t say.

A part of him is still reaching for Saya, seeking her protection, stumbling in the dark. He pricks his feet on glass shards broken off the west window as he searches blindly for her hand, but she is nowhere to be found. Chai pauses by the shattered pane, where moonlight floods into the library, and supposes that someone who weighs himself down in gold and forbidden magic has no right to fly so close to the sun.

 _I don’t need you,_ he thinks. It’s not very convincing.

Beside them, Eizan tucks his hands into his pockets and beckons the small elf boy to his side. Chai follows him to a bridge and suddenly wants to reveal his intention to take the crown. He’s not quite sure why Eizan would be the first to know, but if the item in the man’s right hand is what Chai thinks it is, then there’s reason enough to exchange that degree of trust.

Eizan turns to face him, slate gray hair nearly matching the color of his eyes under the moon.

“I’d like to ask you for something.”

 

* * *

 

After four more years, Chai graduates with a degree in royal governance and the highest level of magic certification. He makes an exceptional speech as the class valedictorian and is lauded for his myriad of awards. His parents are in attendance, but he cares very little for their presence.

He does, however, appreciate his cousin, who applauds him with much vigor. Princess Alishan is a few years his junior, enrolled at the university’s affiliated secondary school. She makes a regular habit of wearing a hideous yellow bandana — a disguise, she claims — and joining him in the library where he secretly teaches her alchemy.

Alishan is his closest friend and confidante, the one who understands him the most, and the perpetrator of a promise he cannot discard. There is no one who hates their royal blood more than the crown princess, but unfortunately appearances are everything, and she is a master illusionist. So, in exchange for the science of how life falls apart, Chai learns from her how to put his own together again.

He leaves the capital with a diploma and multiple wizardry certificates, a few of which he hides from his parents, as they aren’t aware he’s studied anything but functional and medicinal magic.

Packing his bags and donning his best silks, Chai makes the short trek back to the northern estate in Hayashi. It’s a dreary place to return to, but he does his best to call it home. His room is completely unchanged, as crisp and clean as he left it. The walls are devoid of color, but at least the books lining his shelves from floor to ceiling provide a modest garden of hues, a sight he never expected to miss.

Peering out at the bustling trade town, Chai recognizes a few figures. Hayashi is almost unchanged, life continuing without much interruption. For elves, seven years is a drop in the ocean, and the stasis is almost as comforting as the estate is bleak. Even so, Chai already misses Saya’s homey cottage and the company that filled him with joy and laughter.

The first night back, Chai plans to write a letter to his sister telling her about his alchemy, about Princess Alishan’s parting words, and about the new ring on his right hand, but he hesitates. Alchemy is a dangerous art, limited only to those who have both graduated from Hisui’s top university and passed the army’s Special Forces training, and learning it independently is a major crime.

Rumor has it the Seigi faction is teaching forbidden spells behind closed doors. The hints of rebellion are brewing in the nation’s underbelly, but nothing has come to fruition yet — or so Alishan tells him.

“Someone is moving in the shadows,” the princess says, moments before his departure. “This country will not stay still for long.”

“And what will you do?” asks Chai.

“Nothing, cousin, for I cannot, and I will not _._ ” She taps his chest, fingers adorned with the same Cheng Li dragon he has. “You see, I was under the impression that _you_ would be the one turning tides.”

“I am the mere heir to a northern estate.”

“Nonsense.” Alishan shakes her head and removes her bandanna, a tattered thing brighter than a ripe mango. They are at the city limits, a few blocks from the border checkpoint that separates the capital from the mainland. “What are you afraid of? Do you really think the Meihua clan will come to power?”

“I’m can’t say.” Chai’s upper lip curls in distaste as the princess holds up eight fingers. “You seem to forget that before _eight,_ there are seven others including yourself, Rei, Jin, Yuri—”

She swats him with the bandanna. “Don’t list all our family members to me. I know who’s who. And don’t forget, before me, there is _your_ father.”

Chai snatches the offending yellow item and waves it just out of her reach, sneering. He’s developed a penchant for smirking, a wholesomely unbefitting habit for someone the citizens call “young lord” when he passes, but he likes to think Saya and Eizan would approve.

“But you want it, don’t you?” says Alishan, giving up on retrieving her bandanna.

Chai throws it haphazardly over her head and shrugs to disguise the anxious twinge in his chest. There are huge powers already at work, and he has yet to be born into the world of politics.

Princess Alishan narrows her eyes at him, huffing slightly before digging a necklace from within her blouse. A simple, circular pendant of jade dangles from a thin chain, a drop of gold gleaming at its center. There, the name of their homeland is engraved as an open reminder of the duty it signifies.

“Someday, you will take this from me,” she says, “and wear it around your neck.”

“I cannot promise you that,” Chai replies, hands clasped neatly behind his back. He refuses to even touch the necklace and diverts his eyes when she presents it closer.

“How about now?” The princess produces a small turquoise band from her pocket, swiftly grabs his arm, and forces it onto his right thumb, the only digit without a ring.

Chai snatches his hand back, scowling when she snickers. Alishan knows full well he doesn’t like to be touched arbitrarily, but cheekiness seems to run strong in their generation. He lets it slide, although he’s sore about being an easy mark.

“You had that ready, didn’t you?” he asks accusingly.

“What of it?” Alishan quips. “You cannot give it back now, unless you intend to disrespect your crown princess. 

Chai rolls his eyes. “A cheap trick. To me, you’re still an impertinent little brat.”

“Nonsense,” she repeats. “We’re all made of the same things, are we not? Water, carbon, ammonia, lime—”

“Incorrect.” Chai rotates his new fifth ring around his thumb, irked by its perfect fit. While Alishan may smile with a demure naivety, she is anything but.

“Then enlighten me, Number Eight,” she says, holding the successor’s jade between her thumb and forefinger. “What do you know that I don’t?”

_Tell me what it is that makes gold hurt more._

Exhaling, Chai gazes up at the cloudless afternoon sky and ceases fiddling with the jade ring. Someday, he’ll stand beside the others and throw it into the river, an eternal vow sworn to stone. Taizi will be there, sitting atop a rock ledge and watching in silence with his sword laid across his lap. The ring will sink to the bottom of the whirlpools, where the riverbed will keep it safe.

Chai looks back at his cousin and smiles bitterly. Tracing every impact that has marred his back, he says —

“We are made of permanence and brevity; we are made of scars.”

 

* * *

 

Skeptical of his letter’s safety, Chai enchants it with a lock before sending. However, he never manages to hand it off to a mail carrier before he’s “invited” to the main chamber where his distinguished parents wait expectantly. Their quarters are familiar to Chai — at least, their floors are. He distinctly recalls his blood-strewn tears dripping into the ornate, interwoven patterns of the rug. It’s unquestionably his least favorite room.

His parents’ grim expressions bely their supposedly cordial welcome. Chai treads carefully, wary of gilded staffs and spotless floor tapestries.

“My son,” says his father, calling for him to approach. “I would like to give you something to congratulate you.”

“For what?” Chai asks.

“For your graduation, of course.”

There’s no conceivable way to foresee the outcome of this confrontation, as Hayazhen Cheng Li is an unreadable man with a military background in warfare and a tendency to revive Chai’s habit or obsessively wringing gold about his fingers. Suddenly, silk feels stifling and his metal-plated necklace rests heavily across his collarbones like unreliable armor.

“Come, give me your hand,” his father says.

Chai extends his left hand, the one without any jewelry at all. Hayazhen presents a sixth ring for his son, but Chai refuses to touch it after putting it on. He doesn’t turn it in monotonous loops, doesn’t find comfort in it. It reminds him he only ever wore gold out of spite and fear, and he is loath to succumb to its unyielding weight.

It’s the family ring, a solid gold band embedded with jade around its circumference. Engraved atop the crowning gem is the same dragon seal on Chai’s right middle finger, but larger. He wears it on his left hand as their father did, thinking to himself how horrendous it would look on Saya.

“You understand what this means?” says Hayazhen. His now ringless fist clasps the polished handle of his walking stick.

“Yes, sir.”

“Your uncle, the King, wore that same ring hundreds of years ago. When he took the throne, he passed it down to me, and now I to you. Wear it with pride and bring honor to our name.”

Chai fixes a false smile to his face.

“I will,” he says, trying not to shrug his father’s hand off his shoulder.

“You’re poor at hiding your displeasure,” says his mother. “Although, admittedly, you were always harder to read than Saya.”

“Enough, Asuka. He will do fine.” Hayazhen removes his hand. “I have faith.”

Chai wonders vaguely if either of his parents notice he’s grown, or if they acknowledge anything other than academic accolade and social ladder climbing. He takes his father’s so-called ‘faith’ with a grain of salt, as royals are hardly ever honest when they smile.

The day he became the 8th heir to the throne was the same day the patriarch had disregarded Saya as the successor to the northern estate. By Hayazhen’s request, the King had drafted a royal summons to fish her from the capital’s populace and force her home via royal escort. Of course, Saya chose to rip the decree to shreds and throw it back in their faces.

She’s still a Cheng Li by name, but Hayazhen had immediately transferred the family title to Chai instead. Saya’s shameless scorn for her parents is a blemish, a dishonor that eats away at their reputation like a disease. Years later, Chai pays the price, damned by the evidence of knowing the truth.

“What truth?” he says, feigning innocence.

“Don’t lie to us,” Asuka warns. She has an uncanny ability to see through Chai’s acts, just as her own mother, Hokkaia, did.

Chai doesn’t consider omissions to be lies, just as confessions are not always truths. When he was small, he never told anyone he’d ruined the backs of priceless sorcery books. No one saw the ink lacing his fingertips, therefore no one matched the black of his hands to the black bleeding through precious texts.

Until one day, he forgets to retrieve his golden bangles, which he’d set aside because they impede his writing. His mother finds out, and his father punishes him for it.

“I’m not lying,” he says, just as he had back then. Chai does not tell lies. (a lie.)

“Don’t be insolent,” snaps his mother. “Do you realize what we have given you?”

Chai holds up his left hand and sneers. “You mean the power to be insolent? Yes, I do realize, thank you.”

When the staff comes for his head, he dodges with an impressive speed that takes both his parents by surprise. Astonishment flickers across their faces, but they outdo him in a matter of seconds. His mother seizes one of his wrists and yanks him down to her eye level. A hand flies across his face so fast he’s momentarily blinded.

Then, with the force of a thunderclap, the Duke of Hayashi nearly breaks his own son’s jaw.

“Someone has taught you to be impudent,” he says.

Chai staunchly refuses to cry, turning back slowly and daring to simmer in anger.

“I like to say _brazen,_ ” he replies rigidly, “because it sounds rather gallant, don’t you think?”

He braces himself for another strike, but it doesn’t come. Instead, Hayazhen laughs, a sound that grips Chai with a fear beyond suppression. There’s a reason why he and Saya never physically retaliated, and that’s because their father is the most terrifying of all.

“You dodge like someone out of the Academy,” says the duke. “I can’t say I’m displeased.”

Chai wipes his split lower lip with his sleeve, grimacing when his jaw throbs at the touch.

“It’s my pleasure,” he mutters. The rational corner of his mind begs him to stop, but years of embitterment bait him into provocation.

“But Chai, my son,” Hayazhen says. “Do you know what one learns during forty years of war?”

The boy stiffens. There are many types of battlefields, but the grisly bloodshed the country of Liang witnessed in its last war made sure to carve cruelty into the crevasses where compassion once resided. Survival was everything then, and now it’s the instinct that fills Chai with an unyielding sense of dread. To his dismay, he cannot stop the shaking that wracks his entire body from the inside out as the gilded walking stick tilts his chin up.

“I moved your name to the center of the grand corridor,” says his father. “Would you like me to tear it down?”

“No, sir.”

“Then tell me the answer to my question, Chai.”

Bravery is not a word he’s ever committed to himself, but so long as no one sees, so long as he survives and keeps his name on that wall, he can still fulfill his promises. Consequences are only relevant on a surface level, so Chai takes a page out of Saya’s book and pushes the boundaries as far as he can before the colors escape the lines.

“No,” he says, fingers digging crescents into his palms and drawing blood beneath his nails. It blends into red silk, blotted streaks of crimson upon crimson.

Later, Chai will smooth the wounds from his skin and reconstruct his broken jaw. He’ll stitch together his face with magic and sob tearlessly in the dark. His fabrics will be rearranged into pure, unblemished threads and he’ll bitterly fill the clan insignia on his left hand with complete gold ore.

But at present, he continues to duck and elude as he’s been trained, inciting his esteemed father to stand. He raises his fists only to defend, hearing the echo of gold bracelets he’d discarded long ago, only to discover than the Duke of Hayashi is fifty times more fearsome when his opponent is brave.

Pleading for the lavish blood-laden tapestries to stop telling him who he should be and who he will be, the heir to the northern lands searches for himself. With his face clutched in his hands and blood dribbling down to his elbows in spiraling wristlets, Chai stops wandering.

Chai may hate gold, but he hates his parents even more. (a truth).  

 

* * *

 

“I’d like to ask you for something.”

Eizan traces whorls in the wooden handrails of the bridge they cross every night. Far above, the crescent moon counts every heartbeat in time with the ripples of the pond, a silver eye heavily lidded by the earth’s shadow.

“I already know what is it,” responds Chai, oozing a newfound confidence and witty eloquence that surpasses that of his chatterbox sister. “But in exchange, you owe me a lifetime supply of novels from around the world, in every language and every genre.”

“A difficult requirement, don’t you think?” Eizan reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small, black velvet box.

“Only for the unqualified,” says Chai, grinning.

“Anything else?” Eizan flips the lid of the box open and tilts a wide jade hairclip into his hand. It gleams in the moonlight, a deep, rich cerulean green with milky marbling. He cups the golden clasp and admires the artistry before handing it to Chai.

The elf boy shakes his head as he receives the piece gingerly.

“It seems like the rest comes naturally to you.”

Eizan exhales deeply, as if he’d been holding his breath the whole time. It’s amusing to see such a stoic man express any sort of worry.

“Thank you,” he says, the tension visibly leaving his shoulders.

“Don’t thank me yet, Halfie. I never said I approved of your attire.” Chai plucks at Eizan’s linen sleeve.

Eizan _almost_ smiles. “Don’t insult a man who’s asking for your sister’s hand in marriage. It’s rude.”

“It was a compliment,” Chai quips, beaming wider. “Although Saya thinks I have no sense of fashion.”

“You really don’t.” The half-elf nods at Chai’s horribly matched vest and inner tunic before hiding what looks like a genuine smile.

The two lapse into silence, the jade hairpiece returned safely to its case. They admire the moon and its unrivaled stillness, a perfect composite of pure imperfections.

Chai is wholly content, almost giddy. In the spring, when he graduates, he’ll return to the estate and find their grandmother’s beautiful headdress for the occasion. Years ago, he would’ve rejected the proposal, but now Chai muses over a new definition of the word ‘family’ and decides he’d give everything in the world to see this man make his sister smile.

Of course, this is something he doesn’t tell Saya. Soon, she’ll know. 

 

* * *

 

This time, there is no royal summons. She comes of her own accord to settle the score once and for all, and yet somehow, they expect her.

Saya arrives like a hurricane, her dress the color of autumn leaves and her satchel full of coins meant for a pair of jade earrings. She is wrapped in animosity and she makes it clear to every individual in her path.

The first person she encounters is Chai, but he swiftly avoids her and slinks to some obscure corner of the mansion. Saya notices the clan ring on his left hand, but she ignores it in favor of chasing him down. Unfortunately, Taizi had drilled stealth into the boy’s training regiment, and Chai has become _very_ good at evading. A couple of maids give her unhelpful directions, but they do tell her Chai has hardly spoken in a week.

“The young master’s been holed up in the library for nights on end,” one of them says. “He won’t accept any food or drink.”

Eventually, after an hour of hunting, Saya finds him by the west window looking like he’s given up on hiding.

“Did something happen?” she asks, holding his face gingerly in both hands. He shudders at her touch, which is a first. Saya’s keen eye finds nothing besides a trace of bizarre, geometric patterns beneath his eyes and along his jaw — the aftermath of healing alchemy — and an indecipherable silence.

When her forehead touches his to check for a fever, he jerks back vehemently. A bit of medicinal ointment rubs off onto Saya’s face, and she frowns. Chai tugs wordlessly at the fitted black sleeves under his outer mantle and looks at everything but his sister.

“It’s okay,” Saya says softly, pulling him gently into a hug. “You can tell me. It’s okay.”

Chai hates the stupidly hoarse whimper that escapes his throat. He had finally managed to stop shaking after five days, only to be reduced to a skittish mess that falls apart in her embrace. Inwardly, he apologizes to Taizi for being incapable of growth. Of course, the redhead would argue otherwise, but Chai is in no state to believe so.

“What did they do?” Saya whispers, leaning back and holding him at arm’s length.

The taste of iron on his tongue tells him he’s been biting his lower lip. Chai ducks when Saya attempts to brush the hair from his forehead. There’s a new scar there, one he was too tired to notice sooner. It has since scabbed over, leaving a jagged mark along his temple.

Slowly, excruciatingly, his vision fragments behind tears and it’s like he’s peering through that awful violet looking glass, turning ever so slowly over a prism of summer constellations. He recognizes each one, hears his grandmother’s voice explaining the story behind the shapes, and watches them disappear. A tear slips down his face, and he doesn’t even care.

“Chai, tell me. _What did they do?”_

Strength is a capricious and trifling concept. It escapes his grasp time and time again, judging him with a scrutiny far more complex than any sorcery. He could be the best swordsman, the best fighter, or the best archer, and he’d still fail to parry the blows targeting the brittle lock on his heart.

Chai hates himself with an inordinate fury, hates the boy who is reduced to sad, sad tears because he is _weak._

When Saya asks again what happened, a wry smirk tugs at his chapped lips, familiar and desolate.

_“Nothing.”_

 

* * *

 

The gap between them widens as Saya gives up on his reply and stalks into the central hall. Chai miserably curses his inability to rewind time.

Servants and townspeople alike part ways for Saya, her anger radiating from her figure. Her brother trails several paces behind, unable to still the revived quaking of his hands.

“You’re here,” says Asuka, without turning. She studies the scrolls that hang from floor to ceiling, strolling along the carpeted promenade without haste.

“What did you do?” demands Saya, stopping just short of the marble steps.

The older woman ignores the question and brandishes a jade pin. It’s a small, coin-sized brooch carved into the elaborate shape of a dragon and embellished with diamonds. Their father usually has it pinned to the first clasp of his robes.

“I made this myself,” Asuka muses aloud, “and gave it to your father when we married. Do you know what it symbolizes between the two of us?”

“Sacrifice,” says Saya, voice dripping with acid.

“Incorrect.” Their mother pinches the pin between her fingers, inspecting the scales of the beast.

“Then enlighten me, Mother,” Saya says.

The room grows ominously cold as Chai is reminded of a conversation within the capital’s gates, a lesson in the alchemy of short-lived pains and everlasting scars. He thinks of icy glares thawed only by Saya’s arms thrown around his narrow shoulders, a shield stronger than lowercase apologies and aureate armor.

“It means honor, Saya.” Very briefly, an inkling of regret flashes across their mother’s angular, refined visage. “Your father gave it back to me for today. He told me he didn’t want to wear it, just in case...”

“For safekeeping?” Saya scoffs. “Or are you divorcing after five centuries?”

Chai’s attention drifts to the wall scrolls draping down from high above, displaying the names of those chosen to inherit the dukedom. His stomach drops when he finds Saya’s name just beyond, black ink profound and neglected. It hangs opposite his own with a bleak pride, her script having traded places with his and nullifying his 16 reasons not to care.

Their father arrives and the room snaps to attention. Humbled by his entrance, every servant sweeps into a low bow, all in unison. Ironically, the patriarch carries himself exactly as Saya does — defiantly and ruthlessly. They have both come to win a war, one armed to the teeth with her pride and the other with his uncompromising beliefs.

Hayazhen looks down at his daughter, both of his hands resting serenely on his gilded walking cane. “Do you have something to say?”

“Yes.”

“Then speak.” His grip tightens ever so slightly.

“What did you do to Chai?” Saya demands again, hands balling into fists. “He’s—”

“Absolutely fine,” Hayazhen finishes for her. “You’ve done a respectable job with him. He even talks back now.”

Saya is dangerously calm. Behind her, Chai digs his fingers into heavy silks, a hundred years of guilt gnawing away at him. He wishes he still wore gold bangles so he could strangle his wrists until they drain to a cold, deathly blue.

Obligatory titles overshadow the hall, billowing lightly as a breeze enters the corridor and weaves past the petrified onlookers.

“You have truly outdone yourself this time, Saya. Perhaps I should have expected this.”

“And what, exactly, have I done to deserve such praise?” Saya says, voice dripping with contempt. She doesn’t waver when their father smiles the same terrifying smile that had pierced through Chai’s juvenile bravado.

“I’ve heard rumors of your engagement,” explains Hayazhen. “I should hope you’d inform your family if that were true.”

“Keep hoping,” Saya snarls.

“I am.” Hayazhen watches his daughter’s hands drift to her satchel protectively and sighs. “I continue to hope that you aren’t foolish enough to ruin our family reputation by wedding a man with _tainted_ blood.”

“I’ve been a fool my whole life,” Saya replies. “You should know firsthand.”

“I absolutely forbid it.” The duke strikes the floor forcefully with his staff. “And if you do not change your mind, I will _guarantee_ your inability to marry him.”

Saya reacts nearly the same way she did as a child, except this time with her own form of dignity. Instead of flinging precious trinkets with unbridled fury, she valiantly produces a satchel full of coins and hurls it across the floor in front of her. Somehow, Chai knows it’s the price of jade earrings, and his heart hurts. Silver and gold scatter in rippling waves, mimicking the whisper of wind chimes in the distance.

“I will marry him, no matter what,” Saya declares. Then, more softly, and to herself, _“I will.”_

Beneath Chai’s fingers, marble tiles decompose to calcite. Dread swallows the room and the palpable unease in the air reacts violently with reality.

Their father takes three strides and raises his staff. He strikes Saya so hard she flies across the tiles, sprawled in an array of liquid ruby against alabaster. She stares at the floor for several seconds, bloodied lips trickling red through her fingers. Her trained block is quickly rendered useless against the former military general. As she lies on her side, she makes eye contact with Chai, who hurriedly restores the floor to an immaculate ivory plane.

“What am I to you?” she says, voice quivering. It’s unclear who she’s asking, and Chai doesn’t want to know. “ _Who_ am I to you?”

“You are nobody worth listening to,” replies their father. “No daughter of mine would disgrace her family like this.”

_“Go to hell.”_

“And what of your brother? Do you wish to curse him as well?” Hayazhen’s gaze immediately seeks his son, who straightens out of habit or fear or both. “Just the other day, I told him what would happen should he defy our family’s ideals. He understands very well what’s expected of him. Unlike you, Saya, Chai knows his place.”

The strings binding Saya to a misguided sense of familial duty finally fray beyond repair. They snap with a destructive finality, and Chai can see her resolve in the way she clambers to her feet and gestures widely at the public hall, sweeping past the bystanders.

“Someday you’ll see,” she says. “Every single one of you will see.”

Chai’s fingers mangle marble into limestone and limestone into sand, guided by little more than committed chemical formulas and despair.

“The kingdom will fall and take everything with it. But you—” Saya points at her father and mother, “— _you_ will fall farther beyond. You will go to hell and realize your daughter was right this entire time.”

“I have no daughter,” Hayazhen says coldly.

Behind him, their mother hides the dragon brooch in her sleeve, the illusion of remorse playing on her face. She shakes her head ever so subtly.

The silence that follows is massive and suffocating, an unambiguous reality, a threat sworn to jade. It’s the shape of their father’s voice, cruel and unforgiving as he crosses the corridor and wrenches Saya’s name from the walls.

“If I had one regret,” he says, “it would be you.”

Saya is morbidly quiet; she doesn’t seem to realize she’s crying.

“You finally have what you want,” she says, after a long pause. _“An only son.”_

The words hurt because they are true and because she needs to say them to hold herself together. She looks back and catches Chai’s gaze, making a motion like a loop around her heart. He doesn’t realize until much too late that her gesture is the outline of Princess Alishan’s necklace, the one they all hope he’ll claim someday.

Chai witnesses the world through a garnet kaleidoscope the same color as the royal blood staining robes of silk, and he hears footsteps deserting the place he no longer calls home. He runs after her but all too swiftly, Saya reaches the main road, and soon she is just a southbound speck in the distance, never to return.

Alone with his circles of gold, the only son stops just below the towering gateway of the estate and watches her go.

 

* * *

 

Chai stumbles back to his room and weighs the cost of shame against the taste of secrets on his tongue, the truth in exchange for his name on the wall.

“A half-elf,” he’d wept when the engraved staff shattered his jaw. He tries to convince himself that the pain will be brief, but the scars that emerge are permanent and unforgiving.

Chai wishes he could go back, but wishes are a fault of history and only an impossible alchemy can unlock the past. He can take the world apart and rebuild it again and again, but he can never alter time.

“It’s not her fault,” he tries to say. “It’s mine.”

(a truth.)

Chai wants to apologize and tell her what happened, but he doesn’t need to. Saya already knows.

 

* * *

 

Jade signifies the most valuable of promises, an unbreakable bond honored even when one departs from the living. It’s never gifted lightly or without deep-rooted reason.

Chai, sitting beside the west window, fixates on the lone jewel adorning his left hand. He’s inherited the accumulation of blood vows ingrained in a single stone, a jade piece of the deepest, purest green. He repeatedly crushes the ring into a tangled mess before rebuilding it around his middle finger, melting gold into the grooves of the dragon crest. The symbol is preserved, but ultimately, it’s still a heartless nephrite amulet that convinces Chai he hates jade as much as gold.

His beloved sister is no longer chained to their family name. He isn’t sure why he stays, but every day he continues to endure, awaiting the miracle a wise old woman once said existed past the ocean.

 _Beyond the sea, there is the treasure of life,_ Lady Hokkaia’s voice whispers in his ear, _but it reveals itself only to those who are willing to see its truth._

Chai watches the light fade from the courtyard as dusk engulfs the town.

“And?” he asks, because his grandmother’s stories never had a definitive end. “If I circle the earth, will I find it?”

 _Perhaps,_ she says, with a smile, _or perhaps not._ _Look a little harder, little one._

“Do I have to?” Chai gathers a handful of bravery, wading waist-deep through his grief in search of a way out.  He twists his lingering loyalty around his finger and scrapes courage from crumbled limestone and bands of gold. “I have a feeling I see it every day.”

_You would be clever to think so._

“Does it rise in the east and sleep in the west?” he inquires, standing up. There’s a letter in his hand, a packed bag at his feet, and a saddled horse at the gate. “Does it strike you down if you soar too close?”

Grandmother Hokkaia smiles, her laughter echoing in the library. She puts her hand on his cheek, a gust of warm air that slips through the cracks in the window.

_Yes, my dear, it does._

“I cannot fly, Grandmother. I am not like you.”

She takes his hands, his six rings laid out in her palms, and counts them aloud.

 _True despair is reserved for the boastful,_ she says. _That is why the sun rejects those who venture too close. But Chai, my little one, when you see the answer with your own eyes, you will find the means to fly without falling._

“Then I suppose I have no choice but to keep looking.” He takes his hands back, and his rings feel curiously lighter.

Chai leaves before dawn greets the horizon, locking both the library and his room before shouldering his satchel and mounting his horse. This time, he is the one holding an imperial summons. With an invite to the Royal Palace and a sword he’d forged himself strapped to his back, Chai returns to Hisui.

And, ever so slowly, he begins to find himself.

 

* * *

 

A package of Saya’s most treasured childhood belongings arrives on her doorstep. Inside, she finds a leather pony’s bridle and a pair of white riding gloves. There’s a scrapbook of pressed flowers and ginkgo leaves, a glimmering river stone, and a silk hairbow that belonged to their grandmother. Gingerly, she smooths out a blurred, chalky drawing of her family from a distant summer day, a memento of a better time and a better place nearly a century ago. Regretfully, the colors are faded and muddied.

But the amateur portrait is wrapped around something much more significant. The folds come apart to reveal a tiny wooden bird carved from the bark of an oak tree. Saya’s breath catches in her throat as she cradles it gently. She reaches out for the broken heart she’d left in her little brother’s hands, and when she can’t find it, she begins to laugh through her tears, devastated.

Beyond the ceaseless collection of truths and lies, they are bound together without title or grace, without blood or jade. Fingers interlocked, they tumble through grand halls, they build good fences and break down walls. They sit in their grandmother’s library and construct constellations out of calligraphy, worlds out of paper scrolls, and kingdoms out of scars, daring to glimpse into forever.

The parcel comes without a name, only a handwritten note on the back of childhood memories:

 _I don’t regret wearing gold._  

 

* * *

 

Chai wears gold rings around his fingers because they urge him towards the sky. They encircle him in shimmering, infinite loops and give him a reason to offer his hands, spinning the bands round and round until the metal is warm and malleable his palms. Weightless and radiant, they grant him freedom in semblance of wings.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> It is over...you made it...  
> Thank you for reading about my son, Chai Cheng Li! I'm not crying, this is sweat from my eyes, hahaha ;w;  
>  **Recommended listening:** _Next to Me_ by Otto Knows (my Chai song), any cover of _Dear You -Feel-_ from Higurashi no Naka Koro ni, the entire Koe no Katachi soundtrack, sad FMAB songs, _Onaji Hanashi_ by Humbert Humbert, and of course, _Gold_ by Imagine Dragons 
> 
> So, this is my first fic completely about my own OCs and I discovered that I _really_ enjoy world-building and character development. Chai's story was a struggle to write, as he goes through much unreasonable pain, but I'm glad I got it out. I also wrote the rough draft during finals week, like a fool. 
> 
> Anyway, I'm so sorry @ my bby Chai... I hurt him so much, both emotionally and physically... His parents are really, really awful, but at times I tried to write it so that they are deceptively kind because I feel like that is a little bit realistic. #manipulation, y'know? I also tried to make his relationship with Saya more complicated, but ultimately he really does adore her (still). Oh, and dw, in my next installment of CTC works, Saya will Fix™ things. Also, Taizi adopted an unexpected role and I'd like to thank my orange Greedling for throwing my boi Chai in front of the chara development bus. That, and Grandmama 'Kaia somehow became God from FMAB. This is what happens when you listen to FMAB soundtracks while you write.
> 
> Shoutout to Danie for inspiring me and talking to me all the time about Chai, and to Haru who always reads every single frickin thing I send ~~like a madwoman~~. The fact that you care about Chai at all make me ridiculously happy, u should see my dumb face rn.  (Also damn, Eizan's supposed to be my D&D character and here I am writing a fic about _Chai._ And shhh this is supposed to be a secret fic until we hit their arc. ♫)
> 
> I tried really hard to write clearly, but I like to wax poetic. I hope you caught some of my Easter eggs in this fic, including but not limited to:
>
>>  
>> 
>> \- Me. I'm in this fic. tag yourself I'm Alishan  
> \- random Overhaul references because Chai's initial visual design was based off of Chisaki (see: arm jokes, touch sensitivity, the forehead scar, etc)  
> \- PARALLELISM. I write really circularly, so I HOPE YOU SAW THE PARALLELS IN DIFFERENT PARTS! A lot of things repeat, not just the beginning and end! I swear, in almost every (shorter) part, there is some reference to an earlier section... I always write like this, if you've read my one (1) other fic lol.  
> \- _references to the recommended listening..._  
>  \- all the (a lie/truth) things come in pairs  
> \- my really bad naming sense and me running out of gas/writing really poorly at the end lol  
> \- Saya being really bad at literature and giving me this god-awful quote about punching people  
> \- and more!  
> 
> 
>   
> This was hard to write because while it's Major Spoilers for the main fam, I had to keep out spoilers about Eizan himself. I'm also heckin bad at writing conflict scenes, so the actual confrontation scene was hard. Hayazhen is scary...wtf... I've come to hate my own characters. You can ask me a) how Chai doesn't have brain damage and b) why he accepts being the heir, and I won't be able to give you an answer besides: he's a magic boi and he's also very afraid. You can also ask me what marble and jade are made of because I researched those lol.
> 
> ....Needed this long-ass explanation because well. yeah. It's 7am and I haven't gone to bed, so gouda nite! ;)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _Stay tuned for Happy Chai things and **THANK YOU FOR READING!**_  
> 


End file.
